CNN Names Brianna Keilar Senior Political Correspondent

CNN named Briana Keilar, its senior White House correspondent, to the new role of senior political correspondent and said she would be the lead reporter covering Hilary Clinton and the Democrats as the nation’s next Presidential election takes shape.

She will also serve as the primary fill-in anchor for the network’s 5 p.m. Eastern program, “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” She has been CNN’s senior White House correspondent, and will start her new duties in March, the Time Warner cable network said in a statement Wednesday.

Keilar joined the network in 2006 as general assignment correspondent. Prior to that she was a correspondent for CNN Newsource, where she provided breaking news coverage and reported from the nation’s capital for approximately 800 CNN Newsource partner stations. She joined Newsource from CBS New,s where she served as an anchor, reporter and producer for a CBS newscast that aired on mtvU, MTV’s college network. At CNN, she has served as White House correspondent and a congressional correspondent.

She earned the National Press Foundation’s Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress for her fall 2008 coverage of the $700 billion bank bailout. In one of her earliest jobs, she worked as a morning-show personality for a radio station.